Monday, May 17, 2010

My Camping Trip

By: NathanaelLast week, the 7th-8th, I went on my first camping trip in Indonesia. I went with the fifth and fourth graders. They were learning about the settlers who moved west.

We left Friday the 7th after school. It took about 1 and a half hours to get to the park. After we got in the park we drove up to the camping part of the park. The camping sight is called "The Pines" because there are lots of pine trees.

My friends, Aeden, Nathanael and Yosef, and I had a pine cone fight when we got there. The tents were already set up when we got there. We explored a little bit, then helped get the grill going. It was a long thin rectangular grill. We had hot dogs and corn for supper but the hot dogs had tougher skin than hot dogs. It started to rain and I started whittling my marshmallow stick. We roasted marshmallows over the grill instead of over the fire. They were the long thin strips of colored marshmallows. We took some games over to a sheltered area. I played Dutch blitz and a round of Uno. After we finished playing games we went to the tents. The boys and I played some Monopoly. There were some people sing over microphones close so it was pretty hard to get to sleep.

I got up at 5:30 and walked around. The teacher lit the fire and after a while I went to play on the ropes. There was a V shaped rope and two others; the bottom one was for your feet and the top was to hold onto. While we were over there the adults hid some eggs (they were real!). We were supposed to be pretending we were settlers so we had to collect eggs and milk cows. They hid eggs for us to find. For milking they filled up plastic gloves with water and poked holes in the fingers. Mine popped before I was done. We had pancakes and eggs for breakfast.

After breakfast we went for a hike. Mrs. Williams stayed behind with Makayla who wasn't feeling very well. The trail was very steep with a drop-off on our right. We walked through trees for a while. When we got our of the trees we could see for miles. We walked further and could see all the pine trees on our right, a mountain and buildings straight out, and some kind of clear feilds on our left. There were lots of sunflowers on the mountain. It was very beautiful. No one had brought cameras so some people made plans to go back with cameras. The way back down was steep and it had rained the last night so there was some slick mud.

We went to a play ground that had some ropes and a zip line. On the V shaped rope we had battles to see who could stay on the longest. We would sit on one side at the top of the rope and pull the other side down with us. Paster Allan let some of us shoot a paintball gun. It was fun. I think most of the people if not everybody shot. I liked to bring back pine needles to feed the fire with. The people went back up the mountain and Nathanael and Yosef built a fort in the woods. I just hung out. I fed the fire. I packed up a little bit. After they got back we played a game where the person who is "It" has to keep everyone else off base. The last person on base is "It". We had tuna sandwiches and cheese sandwiches for lunch. After lunch we cleaned up the tents and went back to the playground.

That was my camping trip. I think my favorite parts were the ropes, the fire, and the hike.